1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image-capturing apparatus which captures an image and applies at least color reproduction processing to the image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional image-capturing apparatuses such as a digital still camera capture images to perform color reproduction processing on the images. The color reproduction processing uses color reproduction matrices (for example, a matrix with three rows and three columns). For such color reproduction processing, color reproduction matrices corresponding to appropriate color temperatures are pre-recorded for each illuminant, so that the image-capturing apparatuses determine what is an illuminant at the time of shooting and determine a color reproduction matrix suitable for the illuminant.
The illuminant determination is made according to the color temperature which is continuously variable. Thus, the above-described color reproduction matrices which correspond to appropriate color temperatures are inadequate for color reproduction processing. Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. Hei 10-191378, for example, discloses an image-capturing apparatus which obtains a new color reproduction matrix through interpolation processing based on a plurality of color reproduction matrices. In this invention, the illuminant is assumed to be natural light only (i.e., a single illuminant of natural light).
In actual shooting, however, subjects are illuminated with a plurality of kinds of illuminants (hereinafter, referred to as combined illuminant). One example of such a combined illuminant is of natural light and fluorescent light. Thus, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. Hei 10-191378 may fail to perform proper color reproduction processing because only natural light is considered as illuminant therein.
In view of solving this problem, color reproduction matrices for each combined illuminant to be in actual use may be recorded on memories in advance, as well as the color reproduction matrices for each illuminant. Nevertheless, it is disadvantageous because the recording of the color reproduction matrices for all possible combined illuminants requires an enormous memory capacity.